YouTuber crysknife007 has isolated the ambient engine hum of the Starship Enterprise as heard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. The sound is looped repeatedly into a 24 hour long YouTube movie.

One of my favorite things about the Star Trek franchise are all the great ambient sounds that represent the engine noise on the various ships. My favorite ambient noise from the whole series is the engine idling noise in TNG. I have cleaned up a sample from the show and then looped it for 24 hours. Great for ambiance and imagining that you’re in deep space.

via io9

“Sound” is a short video about humanity’s relationship with sound, featuring sound experts Moby, Imogen Heap, and others. The video was created by the audio sharing platform SoundCloud.

via SoundCloud

The JBL MS-2 is a small digital processor that optimizes the signal coming from a portable music player to improve the quality of sound playing through car or home audio speakers. Dalas Verdugo shows how the MS-2 works in this video by Adam Lisagor (aka Lonely Sandwich).

The MS-2 uses DSP (digital signal processing) equalization to optimize system performance for the acoustic characteristics of your speakers, electronics and vehicle interior, and DSP time correction to ensure that all the sounds reach your ears simultaneously, creating a coherent, richly detailed soundscape.

via Lonely Sandwich

In late June, London’s Science Museum is sure to become a hotbed of art-tech geekery with the unveiling of the newly refurbished and more analog-than-thou Oramics Machine.

Named after its creator Daphne Oram, this early sequencer uses a set of 10 ganged 35mm film loops running over photo-electric cells to produce sound. Tones were produced by hand painting forms to control frequency, duration, amplitude, timbre, etc.

It’s doubtful whether anyone other than Oram every mastered the device, but in addition to her own experiments and compositions, she wrote (painted?) music on the machine for commercials (Lego and Heinz) as well as the soundtrack to The Innocents, 1961′s creepily effective adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.

The machine was the result of engineer Oram’s after-hours tinkering at the BBC, where she eventually succeeded in efforts to create an electronic sound lab. The fruits of the Radiophonic Workshop she founded are familiar to Dr. Who fans who would remember artist Delia Derbyshire sound effects and rendering of the show’s theme song.

Star Wars In Your Pocket by Archie McPhee, a voice keychain featuring six audio clips from Star Wars.

Mention Star Wars and fanboys will start quoting dialog faster than you can pull the ears off of a Gundark. Carry this keychain in your pocket and you can match them line-for-line at the push of a button! It features six clips from the original trilogy with the voices of Princess Leia, Yoda and old-school Obi Wan Kenobi — none of that whiny Anakin kid or Jar Jar Binks!

Audiophiles on xkcd

Jawbone has announced the JAMBOX, a beautifully desigend portable wireless speaker and speakerphone which is now available for pre-order in four different styles/colors.

JAMBOX delivers stunning hi-fi audio in a portable wireless speaker so compact you won’t believe it when you hear it. It’s loud. With an output capacity of 85 decibels, JAMBOX fills even the largest rooms. Unlike other portable speakers, JAMBOX is powered by a pair of proprietary, highly sophisticated acoustic drivers, unmatched in their ability to produce extreme high (tweeter) and low (woofer) frequencies from a single, ultra-small dome speaker. They work in concert with an innovative moving-wall passive bass radiator and airtight enclosure to deliver shimmering highs and thumping lows that you can literally feel – the richest sound all in the palm of your hand.

TinyVox is a cool new iPhone app that lets you easily record voice notes and share them on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. It features an awesome retro cassette tape interface as a visual representation of your audio recordings.

Since February Dan Benjamin has been hosting his excellent audio interview show The Pipeline. His latest interview with Adam Lisagor is a perfect example of what makes the show so great.

Marc Maron is a comedian who’s been doing stand-up comedy since the days of Sam Kinison, but I don’t know him from his comedy work. I know him from “WTF“, his biweekly podcast that started in September 2009. It’s a mixture of political rants, personal introspection frequently bordering on TMI therapy, meta-commentary on his attempt to find a sustainable business model in free internet podcasting, and interviews with well known headliner comedians like Ben Stiller, Patton Oswalt, Margaret Cho, or “Metalocalypse” creator Brendon Small.

It’s the interviews where Marc really shines. As a fellow performer and community member with few axes to grind his guests open up to him as a peer and talk shop in a way that’s often surprisingly personal, intimate, and honest. His insider credentials give him the ability to openly discuss sensitive issues like allegations of joke stealing with Carlos Mencia and his former openers, popularity backlash with Dane Cook, substance abuse and divorce with Robin Williams, or the inside story of the collapse of the Tonight Show with Andy Richter. Marc’s attitude toward himself might be full of indecision and self-doubt, but when he interviews very big names he walks a very fine line between asking difficult questions without being provocative or confrontational. “Not looking to indict, but looking to get some sense of truth.”

I probably wouldn’t have come across Marc’s work if it hadn’t been for his podcast, and if I had I might not have enjoyed. Marc’s comedy style is not my style, but as a podcaster he’s a neurotically likable guy doing increasingly good work that’s well worth checking out. New York locals might want to check out Comix NY, where he’ll be recording two live WTF shows on Wednesday, June 21st.

The late Hunter S. Thompson, father of gonzo journalism, lends his unmistakable voice to a familiar frustration in this support call he placed to the unfortunate A/V firm that installed his new home entertainment system.

“If your set-up is still there tomorrow night, I’m gonna destroy it, and, uh, write about it.”

via Lazlo Thoth

Enjoy a bit of surreality with your radiophonic news broadcast? Think facts are overrated? Are you now, or have you ever been a member of The Church of The SubGenius? Did you play “Rocked By Rape” by The Evolution Control Committee at your wedding?

If so, you’ll likely enjoy the “PR Gnus Of The World News”, an ongoing series by audio cut-up artist and longtime SubGenius, Mr. F. Le Mur. By skillfully re-editing NPR broadcasts, Mr. Le Mur creates short, comic pieces that provide the familiar texture of radio news, but which contain nonsensical or surreal content. Or, in some cases, excising content altogether, deftly playing with the formulaic nature of contemporary reporting.

There are several years of back episodes freely available on the Internet Archive’s Open Source Audio. I recommend leaving them playing in the background as you work. Especially if you have officemates within earshot.

via Mediapathic

Above is Ely Kim’s truly awesome “Boombox: 100 days, 100 songs, 100 locations, 100 dances” — one of the three videos Jason Schultz (Dir Samuelson Law & Technology Clinic, UC Berkeley) used in his South By SouthWest Interactive 2009 panel New Threats to New Media: Fair Use On Trial. Of the many excellent panels and core conversations at SXSWi ’09, Shultz’s stood out as one of the most exciting, unforgettable and still talked about sessions at the convention.

That’s not the only thing that left us stirred and excited: We also truly loved a couple of the packed, standing room only core conversations. Like the provocative and informative How Not To Be Evil (Even By Accident) with Danny O’Brien and Eva Galperin (both from the EFF). Also remarkable and highly valuable was the packed Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks with Dr. Keely Kolmes (professional website) and Thomas Roche. See also: the Therapy 2.0 wiki here. Don’t get me wrong: there was some pure, tiresome, self-congratulatory crap on the schedule; but the value, when found, was extremely high.

But it was the Fair Use on Trial panel that had the dynamic format, high energy, conflict and controversy that made us remember why it’s worth traveling to see this always-evolving conference. For the panel, Schultz picked Stanford’s Julie Ahrens (one of Shepard Fairey’s lawyers); her polar opposite lawyer Ben Sheffner (Fox Media, the McCain presidential campaign); and film artist Kelly Nyks.

Then Schultz set up a really exciting format: first he’d show us an Internet video where fair use was in question. Next, he’d ask the audience for a quick show of hands — was this fair use or not? No nitty gritty definition or dissection, just our initial gut reactions to the video. Fast! Schultz then gave each lawyer three minutes apiece to argue their case (and they were at odds each time). After the arguments, then Schultz would quickly ask the room again — was the video fair use, or not? Then he’d ask if anyone changed their minds. Every time, people did. Jason would then ask one of the people who’d switched to tell us the reason they switched, and only 30 seconds to sum it up for the room. It was the Fair Use Experiment. We watched three videos total, and the Q/A after was on fire.

It was intense, fast-paced and sparked conversations that continued — well, we’re still having them. One of the other videos Schultz showed was “The Films of Stanley Kubrick“. What do you think? Are either of the videos in this post fair use, or not? This slide was our guide.

* More images from the panel are here.

photo by Violet Blue

April Baer of Oregon Public Broadcasting did an pre-event story on this year’s Portland Santacon for NPR’s All Things Considered. You can listen to it here.

See Previously:

- Santacon 2008, Global Santarchy Invasion Planned For December

- You’d Better Watch Out: Portland Santacon ’96

photo by ohhh_yeah808

Thanks to Santa Yankee Pants for the tip!

Tack Sharp is a great new photography podcast hosted by James Duncan Davidson and Dan Benjamin. Their latest episode “Crop Factor” talks about the differences between crop-frame and full-frame cameras. You can subscribe directly via iTunes.

The brainchild of Lorin Edwin Parker and his wife Sarah Seeling, Electric Western is ”Dedicated to the creative use of technology from tubes to germanium & steam to solar.” Saving the world from flat digital sound and pretentious audiophilia.” Thus far, their eclectic inventions – all entirely hand-built – include a steam-powered synthesizer, a fully vintage re-creation of Leon Theremin’s original 1919 Theremin, and such unclassifiable oddities as the ElectroSparklavier, an instrument in which “sound is generated by the ionization of gases within the neon bulbs and thyratron tubes and mixed in various computer triodes.”

In addition to creating Electric Western, Mr. Parker (born, according to his website, in “1877, Idledale Colorado”) is a musician and audio engineer who currently teaches sound design at the Art Institute of California in Los Angeles. He is also a noted Proponent of the Moustachio, and the creator of an interactive drag-and-drop mustache game. Mr. Parker describes the unifying vision behind all these pursuits thusly:

Parker’s aesthetic is an anachronistic confluence of the cultural and technological past, present and future. He draws extensively from Victorian and Edwardian culture and design, blending his historical tilt to re-contextualize modern technology and arts. … 21st century art should be progressive, fun, accessible, even humorous. My art is not meant to be selective or exclusive — it is viable conceptually and as pure entertainment.

Current Electric Western projects include research into the ionic acoustics of plasma, chemo-electric synthesis and ion energy exchanges, further historical instrument reproductions (Ondes Martenot, Trautonium) and a DIY electric car conversion. Excelsior!

photo by Electric Western

A friend and I at work started talking about weird speakers, so… here’s the results of a couple hours of surfing and gawking.

First let’s start with the affordable, I noticed these on a Korean site, but actually Scott has covered them before:

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To paraphrase Monty Python: These are the biggest earbuds you’ll ever see! They cost like $50. Let’s move quickly on…

Then there’s iPond. Yes, of course, it’s a “portable aquarium-speaker”. What else?



Best line: “The iPod speaker that comes with built-in tuna“. Somehow Scott hadn’t blogged this before, I am incredibly grateful.

The Ice Cream Sundae speakers will run you $1250 per pair–sweet deal!

From SG Custom Sound who carry a bunch of wild designs. Now let’s go waaay upmarket…

The Nautilus from B&W runs $60K and it’s Cephalopodonous so it gets points for that!

The Muon speakers from KEF were designed by Ross Lovegrove, are made of aluminum, weigh 253 pounds, and are 7′ tall–see Engadget for more details.

They had an incredible launch event for these at the Milan Furniture Fair 2007–check the video. They cost $140K and they only made 100 pairs. For some reason I can’t find any of those pairs for sale on eBay at the moment. :((

And last to mention are the Grand Enigma, a one-of-a-kind set by Kharma, which cost $1,000,000. I won’t even show you a picture cuz they are bigger than they are pretty. And you can’t have them anyway.

Poking around on this theme I found several pages dedicated to cataloging Weird Speakers, enjoy:

• freshome.com recently posted 17 Cool Speakers Designs that Look Better than They Sound
• from CNET Asia
• from HigherFi.com
• Audio Junkies’ 15 sexiest speakers

See Previously: 500 XL, Desktop Speakers in the Shape of Giant iPod Earbuds

photos by (in order) old valve mic, tnarik, My Friend., SG Custom Sound, X Ge and kaitlin_lo

In 1969 Jerry Levitan, a 14 year old Beatles fan at the time, snuck into the hotel where John Lennon was staying in Toronto and talked him into doing an audio interview about peace. 38 years later Jerry’s son Josh Raskin directed the wonderful animated short “I Met The Walrus”, which he created using the the audio from the interview as the soundtrack. The film features pen illustration by James Braithwaite and digital illustration by Alex Kurina.

via Neatorama

“You Look Nice Today” is a hilarious new podcast featuring Twitter giants Adam Lisagor (@lonelysandwich), Scott Simpson (@scottsimpson) and Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies). Bobby Andersen helped encourage the three to start the podcast.

via Merlin Mann

Here’s the brilliant 1959 comedy album “How to Speak Hip” by Del Close and John Brent, converted from vinyl by Skeyelab Music. Like dig it man.

via Ze Frank